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‘Have you got two minutes?’ she said.

They followed her down the corridor and into her office.

‘No DI Flynn today?’ she asked.

‘She’s not feeling great,’ Poe said. ‘She’s up to date with everything we’ve done, though. Still making sure we stay out of trouble.’

Nightingale cracked a tired smile. She looked exhausted. Bleary, bloodshot eyes in shrunken sockets. The pallid skin of someone who hasn’t spent enough time outside. Yesterday’s clothes hung on the back of her door.

‘You OK, ma’am?’ Poe asked.

‘Have you got anything for me, Sergeant Poe?’

She sounded frustrated. Poe understood why. With the surveillance of the kite, she’d called a play that wasn’t working. It hadn’t been the wrong play but if her assistant chief asked another force to undertake a progress review, the detectives coming in would have had eight hours sleep and be armed with twenty-twenty hindsight. Their first question would be about her effective resource strategy. A large number of detectives had been taken out of the mainstream investigation to watch the tree. So far she’d got nothing for it.

‘It’s possible the kite logos were provided by a printer in Newcastle,’ he said. ‘We don’t have a name but we’ve tracked the parcel to a courier firm in Carlisle. We’ve narrowed down the list of names they gave us from seventy to eleven.’

Nightingale didn’t ask how he had convinced ANL Parcels to provide their customer details. Poe suspected she already knew. Flynn had probably told her.

Poe handed her the Mole People’s profiles.

‘Anyone stand out?’ she said after she’d flicked through them.

Poe told her that Robert Cowell was statistically their most likely suspect.

‘How likely?’ she asked.

‘Under ten per cent.’

Nightingale frowned. ‘We can only surprise him once. If we rush in now and find nothing – and let’s face it he’s hardly put a foot wrong so far – then he’ll be out in twenty-four hours and he’ll either disappear or clean up.’

‘We had a look at his house this morning,’ Poe said.

‘Who told you to do that?’ she said sharply.

‘We weren’t peeping through his letterbox, ma’am, we drove past quickly with a fixed camera.’

‘And?’

‘Nothing,’ he admitted. ‘Nice estate. Quiet. One of those new builds cropping up everywhere.’

‘So we’re back to watching the tree, hoping the killer comes back for the kite.’

Poe said nothing. At some point, no matter how hard it was, you had to cut bait. Stop throwing good detectives into a bad gig. He shuddered to think how many investigative hour

s had been lost watching a tree.

‘You could put a team on Cowell,’ Poe said.

Nightingale let out a long sigh. It sounded like she was deflating.

‘I don’t have unlimited resources, Poe,’ she said. ‘I’ll need to speak to the chief. See if she can stretch the budget. She might not, though – not for a one-in-ten chance.’

Poe didn’t push it. He wasn’t convinced that Cowell was their man either.

Chapter 34

The expert in semiotic studies, clearly enjoying a rare moment of employment, looked like he was auditioning for Doctor Who. He wore a tweed trench coat and a scarf, and had sweeping hair he had to keep flicking out of his eyes.